President Obama Orders ‘Full Review’ of Possible Russian hacking in US Election

In his final month in office, President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a "full review" of pre-election cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations that many believe affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

The United States intelligence agencies have attributed those series of cyber-attacks to Russia that shook the US election season.

"The President earlier this week instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters.

At an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, White House’s counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco announced that the president had "directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process."

President is expecting a full report before the end of his term, and President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January of 2017, as Monaco said that the results of the pre-election hacking’s investigation would be released to Congress before President Obama left office.

At a Heritage Foundation event on Wednesday, Chairman of House Homeland Security Michael McCaul, also called for "consequences" for Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. "If we don’t respond and show them that there are consequences," McCaul said, "the bad behavior will continue… our democracy itself is being targeted."

The announcement comes after Democrats in Congress forced the White House office to reveal details of Russian hacking and disinformation in the presidential election.

"We may be crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what this means, what has happened and to impart those lessons learned," Obama told reporters.
Monaco said the new administration would inherit a rapidly growing national security threat that comes from the Internet across all dimensions.

Meanwhile, Trump has said he was not convinced Russia was behind the pre-election cyber attacks.

"I don’t believe they interfered," Trump told in an interview with Time magazine this week. "That became a laughing point – not a talking point, a laughing point. Anytime I do something, they say, ‘Oh, Russia interfered.’"
In October, the DHS and the US intelligence agency officially blamed Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other political organizations "intended to interfere with the US election process." Though Russia has denied all accusations.

Russian hackers also allegedly stole private emails from a Clinton associate that were later published by WikiLeaks just weeks before election day.

With that, the full report by Obama administration on pre-election hacking might face serious challenges in the next government.